The invention relates to a clamp in form of a mainly U-shaped or V-shaped device for non-invasively affecting a cartilage fold on e.g. the exterior ear with stretching and compressive forces.
Kids with jug-ears, i.e. lacking or having weakly developed anthelix and crura of anthelix, are often teased but also grown ups with untreated jug-ears can experience these as a physical handicap.
Surgical procedures for treating jug-ears and similar ear disorders will be known to a person skilled in the art and will not be discussed any further here. However, invasive correction is painful and requires local or general anaesthesia just as it leaves cosmetically disfiguring scars.
From the inventor's own International Patent Application No. WO 00/09050 is known an innovative device. This known device has a female mould and male mould connected by a pivoting connection and able to permanently deform the cartilage in a selected zone of the ear from opposite sides.
This treatment has proven effective to especially smaller children whose cartilage is still relatively soft and therefore easily can be modulated. Today, a large number of patients all over the world are successfully treated.
Treatment by means of this known device can advantageously be replaced or supplemented by means of the double coated fixture known from the inventor's own International Patent Application No. WO 01/06967. The fixture is adhered on the back of a jug-ear so that it covers most of the area of the ear lacking anthelix and where a permanent cartilage deformation already has been initiated or is wanted. Subsequently the artificial anthelix is folded by the two parts of the plaster being adhesively contacted to each other. Anthelix is gently kept stuck together from the back of the ear while the cartilage is allowed to heal in the damaged state. However, it has turned out that some patients who receive non-invasive treatment for jug-ears by means of the above devices have to be treated for a very long time.
This is due to the elasticity of the cartilage of the exterior ear. This elasticity means that the ear has a tendency to return to its original shape when the ear e.g. has been bent or deformed. This tendency has for some of the patients been so marked that treatment by means of the above device, in which the pivoting connection between female mould and male mould is a U-shaped spring, has proven insufficient as the spring power has not been able to provide the necessary deformation of the cartilage.